Sardinian language

This article is about the modern Romance language. For ancient Sardinian, see Paleo-Sardinian language.

Sardinian
Sard
  • sardu
  • limba / lìngua sarda
Pronunciation[ˈsaɾdu]
Native toItaly
RegionSardinia
EthnicitySardinians
Native speakers
1 million (2010, 2016)[1][2][3]
Early forms
Standard forms
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
Italy (1999[4])
Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-1sc
ISO 639-2srd
ISO 639-3srd – inclusive code Sardinian
Individual codes:
sro – Campidanese Sardinian
src – Logudorese Sardinian
Glottologsard1257
Linguasphere51-AAA-s
Sardinian is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger[13]
Linguistic map of Sardinia. Sardinian is light red (sardu logudoresu dialects) and dark red (sardu campidanesu dialects).
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Non-native speaker of the Nuorese dialect of Siniscola

Sardinian or Sard (endonym: sardu [ˈsaɾdu], limba sarda, Logudorese: [ˈlimba ˈzaɾda] Sardinian: [ˈlimba ˈzaɾða] (Nuorese), or lìngua sarda, Campidanese: [ˈliŋɡwa ˈzaɾda]) is a Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Western Mediterranean island of Sardinia.

Many Romance linguists consider it, together with Italian, as the language that is the closest to Latin among all Latin's descendants.[14][15][16] However, it has also incorporated elements of Pre-Latin (mostly Paleo-Sardinian and, to a much lesser degree, Punic) substratum,[17] as well as a Byzantine Greek, Catalan, Castilian, and Italian superstratum. These elements originate in the political history of Sardinia, whose indigenous society experienced for centuries competition and at times conflict with a series of colonizing newcomers: before the Middle Ages, the island was for a time a Byzantine possession; then, after a significant period of self-rule with the Judicates, when Sardinian was officially employed in accordance with documentary testimonies, it came during the late Middle Ages into the Iberian sphere of influence, during which Catalan and Castilian became the island's prestige languages and would remain so well into the 18th century. Finally, from the early 18th century onward, under the Savoyard and contemporary Italian one,[18] following the country's linguistic policies which, to the detriment of Sardinian and the local Catalan, led to diglossia.[19]

The original character of the Sardinian language among the Romance idioms has long been known among linguists.[20][21][22][23] After a long strife for the acknowledgement of the island's cultural patrimony, in 1997, Sardinian, along with the other languages spoken therein, managed to be recognized by regional law in Sardinia without challenge by the central government.[5] In 1999, Sardinian and eleven other "historical linguistic minorities", i.e. locally indigenous, and not foreign-grown, minority languages of Italy (minoranze linguistiche storiche, as defined by the legislator) were similarly recognized as such by national law (specifically, Law No. 482/1999).[4][24] Among these, Sardinian is notable as having, in terms of absolute numbers, the largest community of speakers.[25][26][27][28][29][30]

Although the Sardinian-speaking community can be said to share "a high level of linguistic awareness",[31] policies eventually fostering language loss and assimilation have considerably affected Sardinian, whose actual speakers have become noticeably reduced in numbers over the last century.[27] The Sardinian adult population today primarily uses Italian, and less than 15 percent of the younger generations were reported to have been passed down some residual Sardinian,[32][33] usually in a deteriorated form described by linguist Roberto Bolognesi as "an ungrammatical slang".[34]

The rather fragile and precarious state in which the Sardinian language now finds itself, where its use has been discouraged and consequently reduced even within the family sphere, is illustrated by the Euromosaic report, in which Sardinian "is in 43rd place in the ranking of the 50 languages taken into consideration and of which were analysed (a) use in the family, (b) cultural reproduction, (c) use in the community, (d) prestige, (e) use in institutions, (f) use in education".[35]

As the Sardinians have almost been completely assimilated into the Italian national mores, including in terms of onomastics, and therefore now only happen to keep but a scant and fragmentary knowledge of their native and once first spoken language, limited in both scope and frequency of use,[36] Sardinian has been classified by UNESCO as "definitely endangered".[37] In fact, the intergenerational chain of transmission appears to have been broken since at least the 1960s, in such a way that the younger generations, who are predominantly Italian monolinguals, do not identify themselves with the indigenous tongue, which is now reduced to the memory of "little more than the language of their grandparents".[38]

As the long- to even medium-term future of the Sardinian language looks far from secure in the present circumstances,[39] Martin Harris concluded in 2003[40] that, assuming the continuation of present trends to language death, it was possible that there would not be a Sardinian language of which to speak in the future, being referred to by linguists as the mere substratum of the now-prevailing idiom, i.e. Italian articulated in its own Sardinian-influenced variety,[41][42] which may come to wholly supplant the islanders' once living native tongue.

  1. ^ Alkire, Ti; Rosen, Carol (2010). Romance languages: a Historical Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 3.
  2. ^ Lubello, Sergio (2016). Manuale Di Linguistica Italiana, Manuals of Romance linguistics. De Gruyter. p. 499.
  3. ^ AA. VV. (2016). Calendario Atlante De Agostini 2017. Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini. p. 230.
  4. ^ a b "Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche", parlamento.it, Italian Parliament
  5. ^ a b "Legge Regionale 15 ottobre 1997, n. 26". Regione autonoma della Sardegna – Regione Autònoma de Sardigna. Archived from the original on 26 February 2021. Retrieved 15 June 2018.
  6. ^ "Legge Regionale 3 Luglio 2018, n. 22". Regione autonoma della Sardegna – Regione Autònoma de Sardigna.
  7. ^ Massimo Pittau (2005). Grammatica del sardo illustre. Sassari: Carlo Delfino Editore.
  8. ^ Francesco Corda (1994). Grammatica moderna del sardo logudorese: con una proposta ortografica, elementi di metrica e un glossario. Cagliari: Edizioni della Torre.
  9. ^ Antonio Lepori (1979). Prontuario di grammatica sarda: variante campidanese. Cagliari: Litografia C.U.E.C.
  10. ^ "Arrègulas po ortografia, fonètica, morfologia e fueddàriu de sa norma campidanesa de sa lìngua sarda" (PDF). Quartu S. Elena: Alfa Editrice. 2009.
  11. ^ Bartolomeo Porcheddu (2012). Grammàtica de sa limba sarda comuna. Ossi: LogoSardigna.
  12. ^ "Limba Sarda Comuna. Normas linguìsticas de referèntzia a caràtere isperimentale pro sa limba sarda iscrita de s'Amministratzione regionale" (PDF). Regione Autonoma della Sardegna. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 July 2023. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  13. ^ "Sardinian". UNESCO WAL. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
  14. ^ Carlo Tagliavini (1982). Le origini delle lingue neolatine. Bologna: Patron. p. 122.
  15. ^ Henriette Walter (1994). L'Aventure des langues en Occident. Paris: Robert Laffont. p. 158.
  16. ^ "Romance languages". Encyclopedia Britannica. 4 December 2023. ...if the Romance languages are compared with Latin, it is seen that by most measures Sardinian and Italian are least differentiated.
  17. ^ Antonio Mele, Edoardo Murgia (2015). Termini prelatini della lingua sarda tuttora vivi nell'uso. Olzai: Ilienses.
  18. ^ Mereu, D. (2020). Cagliari Sardinian. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 50(3), 389–405. doi:10.1017/S0025100318000385
  19. ^ The Oxford guide to the Romance languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. p. 272.
  20. ^ "Il più caratteristico degli idiomi neolatini, di gran lunga più caratteristico del ladino o del franco-provenzale." ("The most characteristic of the Neo-Latin languages, by far more characteristic than Ladin or Franco-Provençal.") Matteo Bartoli (1903). "Un po' di sardo" in Archeografo triestino, vol. I, serie III. Trieste.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  21. ^ "Da G. I. Ascoli in poi, tutti i linguisti sono concordi nell'assegnare al sardo un posto particolare fra gl'idiomi neolatini per i varî caratteri che lo distinguono non-solo dai dialetti italiani, ma anche dalle altre lingue della famiglia romanza, e che appaiono tanto nella fonetica, quanto nella morfologia e nel lessico." ("From G. I. Ascoli onwards, all linguists agree in giving Sardinian a special place among the neo-Latin languages because of the various characteristics that distinguish it not only from the Italian dialects, but also from the other languages of the Romance family, and that appear as much in its phonetics as in its morphology and lexicon.") Almagia, Roberto; Cortesi, Fabrizio; Salfi, Mario; Sera, Gioacchino; Taramelli, Antonio; Momigliano, Arnaldo; Ciasca, Raffaele; Bottiglioni, Gino; Garzia, Raffa; Gabriel, Gavino; Brunelli, Enrico; Vardabasso, Silvio (1936). Sardegna in Enciclopedia Italiana, Treccani, "Parlari".
  22. ^ "Il Sardo ha una sua speciale fisionomia ed individualità che lo rende, in certo qual modo, il più caratteristico degli idiomi neolatini; e questa speciale individualità del Sardo, come lingua di tipo arcaico e con una fisionomia inconfondibile, traspare già fin dai più antichi testi." Carlo Tagliavini (1982). Le origini delle lingue neolatine. Bologna: Patron. p. 388.
  23. ^ Lai, Rosangela. 2018. "Language Planning and Language Policy in Sardinia". Language Problems & Language Planning. 42(1): 70–88. ISSN: 0272-2690, E-ISSN: 1569-9889 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00012.lai, pp. 70–71
  24. ^ L'UNESCO e la diversità linguistica. Il caso dell'Italia
  25. ^ "With some 1,6 million speakers, Sardinia is the largest minority language in Italy. Sardinians form an ethnic minority since they show a strong awareness of being an indigenous group with a language and a culture of their own. Although Sardinian appears to be recessive in use, it is still spoken and understood by a majority of the population on the island." Kurt Braunmüller, Gisella Ferraresi (2003). Aspects of multilingualism in European language history. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: University of Hamburg. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 238.
  26. ^ "Nel 1948 la Sardegna diventa, anche per le sue peculiarità linguistiche, Regione Autonoma a statuto speciale. Tuttavia a livello politico, ufficiale, non cambia molto per la minoranza linguistica sarda, che, con circa 1,2 milioni di parlanti, è la più numerosa tra tutte le comunità alloglotte esistenti sul territorio italiano." Wolftraud De Concini (2003). Gli altri d'Italia: minoranze linguistiche allo specchio. Pergine Valsugana: Comune. p. 196.
  27. ^ a b "Sebbene in continua diminuzione, i sardi costituiscono tuttora la più grossa minoranza linguistica dello stato italiano con ca. 1.000.000 di parlanti stimati (erano 1.269.000 secondo le stime basate sul censimento del 2001)". Sergio Lubello (2016). Manuale Di Linguistica Italiana, Manuals of Romance linguistics. De Gruyter. p. 499.
  28. ^ "Lingue di Minoranza e Scuola, Sardo". Archived from the original on 16 October 2018. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
  29. ^ "Inchiesta ISTAT 2000, pp. 105–107" (PDF).
  30. ^ "What Languages are Spoken in Italy?". WorldAtlas. 29 July 2019.
  31. ^ Durk Gorter; Heiko F. Marten; Luk Van Mensel. Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 112.
  32. ^ La Nuova Sardegna, 04/11/10, Per salvare i segni dell'identità – di Paolo Coretti
  33. ^ Corongiu, Giuseppe (2010). La politica linguistica per la lingua sarda, in Maccani, Lucia; Viola, Marco. Il valore delle minoranze. La leva ordinamentale per la promozione delle comunità di lingua minoritaria. Trento: Provincia Autonoma di Trento. p. 122.
  34. ^ Roberto Bolognesi (2000). "Un programma sperimentale di educazione linguistica in Sardegna" (PDF). p. 126. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
  35. ^ Roberto Bolognesi (2000). "Un programma sperimentale di educazione linguistica in Sardegna" (PDF). p. 120. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
  36. ^ "Sardinian language use survey, 1995". Euromosaic. To access the data, click on List by languages, Sardinian, then scroll to "Sardinian language use survey".
  37. ^ "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". UNESCO.
  38. ^ Lai, Rosangela. 2018. "Language Planning and Language Policy in Sardinia". Language Problems & Language Planning. 42(1): 70–88. ISSN: 0272-2690, E-ISSN: 1569-9889 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00012.lai, p. 73
  39. ^ Martin Harris; Nigel Vincent, eds. (2003). The Romance languages. London: Routledge. p. 21.
  40. ^ "If present trends continue, it is possible that within a few generations the regional variety of Italian will supplant Sardinian as the popular idiom and that linguists of the future will be obliged to refer to Sardinian only as a substratal influence which has shaped a regional dialect of Italian rather than as a living language descended directly from Latin." Martin Harris; Nigel Vincent, eds. (2003). The Romance languages. London: Routledge. p. 349.
  41. ^ "il sardo continua ad agire anche nelle menti dei sardi che il sardo non lo conoscono né lo parlano, che non l'hanno mai appreso e imparato; il sardo agisce se non altro nelle strutture linguistiche d'ogni livello dell'italiano regionale di Sardegna, che è il codice usato dai più (agisce nella fonetica, nella sintassi e in ampi settori del lessico)..." Virdis, Maurizio (2003). La lingua sarda oggi: bilinguismo, problemi di identità culturale e realtà scolastica, cit. in Convegno dalla lingua materna al plurilinguismo, Gorizia, 6.
  42. ^ Maurizio Virdis (2012). Prospettive identitarie in Sardegna, in Contarini, Silvia. Marras, Margherita. Pias, Giuliana. L'identità sarda del XXI secolo tra globale, locale e postcoloniale. Nuoro: Il Maestrale. p. 34.